Question on Romania

As I have stated in other posts, the Communist Party is the mirror of the masses' will. It does not "educate" or "elucidate" the masses, it merely follows the demands of the workers. That being said, as a Communist, I oppose abortion and contraceptives

Even if the masses demand it? Rights of women to control their own bodies and all?

Romania was no ruled by the people once Gheorghiu Dej was elected leader. The Communist party forged the votes therefore they got "elected". Ceausescu later appointed trustees and family in high positions of the parliament and, as Michels' Iron law of the Oligarchies tells us, there was no taking the communist party elite down.Now would the bureaucrats have a reason to rebel. Communism was not a gloom period in Romania's history (except for the latter part when the population was underfed due to Ceausescu's surreal expectations of paying the foreign debt). Yes, the state got caught in the whirlwind that was European class awareness at the time but good things did come out of it such as the industrialization, industrialization which still runs the Romanian production nowadays.

Romania was a bit different from the other Soviet bloc nations for reasons already mentioned. From time to time you do read about nostalgia for the past, even in Romania, which had far more severe problems towards the end of its life. I wonder if those people are nostalgic for socialism in general, or specifically for the economic achievements before the 80s. Achievements which were built on quicksand, considering the foreign debt.

People who say "good riddance" about Ceausescu are also full of it, because he was basically killed in a palace coup. The people complicit in the failings of the regime used the protests to secure their own position, along with second-rank figures who had fallen out of favour with Ceausescu at some point. There is so much about the events of 1989 in Romania that turned out to be false. For instance, the false reports about a "massacre of thousands" in Timisoara (link) that was the battle cry in Bucharest, the poisoning of water, the involvement of Libyan or Palestinian militants, etc.

Then there's the stuff that was never cleared up. After Ceausescu's flight, there was the ongoing fighting in the streets between soldiers of the new regime and "phantom" terrorists. Different army units fighting each other over an airport that was already secured. Stories about Securitate operatives, shooting people and disappearing. And then after a few days, it suddenly stopped, and nothing was heard of it again except in the most general terms. At the very least, we can say that the idea of a powerful, well-armed secret police and party elite is dubious, considering how quickly it all collapsed. And we're not even talking about the suspected Soviet involvement.

After the "revolution", protests and discontent continued, and the new government responded by arming miners with clubs and sending them against demonstrators. The development in Romania was completely different compared to other countries. In East Germany, political parties were simply formed along the lines of their western counterparts, along with reformist elements of the ruling party. In other countries, leading dissidents were voted into power after the ruling parties stepped aside without much bloodshed. But in Romania, a junta of "communist" figures took power, executed the Ceausescus, legitimised itself as a political party, won an election in which the opposition was never given a chance, and then crushed this opposition.

It's totally incomparable to the other countries, and there's still so much unknown about what exactly happened. We easily forget about this and think that the Romanian "revolution" was just like in all the other countries, but with more bloodshed, when in reality Ceausescu was simply murdered by his own subordinates. To be cheerful about this just because of disapproval of Ceausescu's ruling style is extremely naive.

As for Ceausescu himself, he basically followed Khrushchevian revisionism in declaring the definitive triumph of socialism and the end of class struggle. The PCR of the 60s allowed anyone in without a candidacy stage, and emphasised bureaucratic and technocratic skills. They followed an ideology of nationalism that included the trappings of the old fascist regime, like Ceausescu taking on the title of "Conducator". On the economic level, Romania worked itself into massive debts with capitalist countries to maintain a prosperity that had little basis in reality. The austerity in the 80s was a desperate attempt to deal with this problem, but by then it was far too late.

There should be no dispute about Ceaușescu being a revisionist. Among other examples of such revisionism was the fact that the PCR was the only "communist" party that had fraternal relations with Mobutu's MPR.

Furthermore:

"The [Romanian Communist Party] has redefined and extrapolated the Leninist definition of conflicts as being 'antagonistic' or 'nonantagonistic' to the sphere of international relations in general and to the South [i.e. third world] in particular... Thus, conflicts between Communist states (China and the Soviet Union, Kampuchea and Vietnam) or between various developing countries are defined as basically 'nonantagonistic,' to be solved through negotiations and compromise only. While the Soviets admit no compromise (and neither do the Chinese) between 'revisionism' and Marxism-Leninism, or between 'reactionary' and 'progressive' developing countries, the RCP has not used the word 'revisionism' since the 1950s, when it applied it [at the time] to Tito, and rejects the very distinction between 'progressive' and 'reactionary' regimes in the South, a distinction which provides the basis for Soviet involvement in support of various radical regimes and groups there. In the words of a Romanian commentator:

'The emphasis placed on dividing the developing countries into 'progressive' and 'moderate' ones and opposing them to each other in international relations runs counter to the unanimously recognized principle of peaceful coexistence of countries with different social and political systems, feeding instead the theory of the spheres of influence, which is used to weaken the unity of the developing countries in the international arena.'

This position is very similar to that of the Yugoslavs, reflecting once again the similarity of viewpoint between Belgrade and Bucharest concerning the role and character of the Nonaligned Movement...

The very foundation of the RCP ideology, its demand that every Communist party be free to choose its own way of applying Marxism-Leninism, is linked to a rather particular assessment of the international situation as a whole. Although Bucharest does occasionally admit the existence of international conflicts, as Ceausescu puts it, 'Imperialism is much weaker than most people would say, and to overestimate its strength would lead to panic.'"(Radu, Michael (ed). Eastern Europe and the Third World: East vs. South. New York: Praeger Publishers. 1981. pp. 239-240.)

"There is no going back either to old theses or the slogans which reflected the conditions of past periods. The concept of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has ceased to correspond to reality, and I hereby inform you and all those who did not know about it that several years ago, a plenum of our Central Committee adopted an ideological programme from which we excluded the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which was deemed inappropriate from many points of view. We must not for a moment identify the dictatorship of the proletariat with the power of workers and peasants, the power of the people; those are things which should not be mixed up. The way towards socialism really does pass, as it should, through democratic reform; however, such reform should have the backing of the majority of the people. Otherwise, the victory of socialism would be impossible."(Nicolae Ceaușescu, quoted in Meeting of Representatives of the Parties and Movements Participating in the Celebration of the 70th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House. 1988. p. 113.)